Teenagers should be encouraged to study the arts and humanities in preparation
for a career in science to shed the subject’s “geeky” image, according to
the anatomist Alice Roberts.

Taking separate qualifications in physics, chemistry and biology at 16 is often too narrow, she said, adding that studying alternative subjects produced “more rounded individuals”.

Dr Roberts also criticised the common stereotype of science and insisted it was not “great to be a geek”.

The comments were made as she takes up a new academic post at Birmingham University.

Dr Roberts, the star the BBC’s The Incredible Human Journey, Coast, and Don't Die Young, will become the university’s first professor of public engagement in science – combining undergraduate teaching and outreach work.

Speaking as she took up the new role, she said that the International Baccalaureate – the Swiss-based qualification in which sixth-formers study a wide range of subjects instead of specialising in just three or four – often acted as a better preparation for science and medicine degrees than A-levels.

The academic, who taught anatomy at Bristol University for more than 10 years, said: “Of the students I saw applying to medical school, the ones that had done the IB seemed to be more rounded individuals.

“I don’t think we should be asking people at 16 if they are an artist or a scientist and making them choose between the two.

“Our education system has always done this. It is really peculiar to say, ‘no we are not going to be renaissance individuals and expect to be literate across the arts, humanities and the sciences – you are going to have to choose between one or the other’.

"I think there is a conceptual problem in our education system with swapping from that very broad focus at GCSE to a very narrow one at A-level.”

Dr Roberts, who studied medicine and anatomy at Cardiff University before working as a junior doctor in south Wales, said that science was often portrayed as inaccessible to most people.

She said that a number of scientists appeared to be "pushing the idea that it is great to be a geek" which acted as a natural barrier to the subject.

“I hate the word geek," she said. "It is being divisive. It is creating labels that are really unhelpful when what we should be aiming for is much more of a renaissance person idea.

“You can be someone who thinks of themselves as an artist but be interested in science, engaged with it and understand it. I think it is possibly unhelpful from the outside that you can’t be a scientist unless you are a geek in the first place.

“I think it is possibly unhelpful from the outside that you can’t be a scientist unless you are a geek in the first place.”

Dr Roberts is to combine her academic post with further television work. This includes a new BBC series on ancient humans and another focusing on the ice age.